Maybe We Need Wingnuts

There are probably some "wingnuts" out there that could find creative ways to screw these up too.

The ubiquitous quick release is probably one of the most misused components in cycling. Well.....maybe saddle bags are a close second. But those are accessories, not really a component. Yeah.....so quick releases it is. At least this is my observation from my repair stand.

There are a lot of lawyers that have made a lot of money from issues arising from failure to use quick release mechanisms properly. For instance, did you know that those dratted "lawyer tabs" found on everyone's front forks since the late 1980's were a result of a quick release issue? There are probably instances of the misuse of this clever invention by Tulio Campagnolo going back to Tulio's days. I think how the the "QR" works is definitely one of the hardest concepts for people to grasp today. I see all sorts of glazed eyes when I try to gently explain how these are to be used.

I thought that the through axle, as devised by Fox Shox and Shimano, would eventually be the device that would finally put the long in the tooth QR out to pasture. It was so simple to use, it was insane. Maybe DT Swiss' Ratcheting Skewer is actually better. Either one would have been okay with me. But noooooo! You have to license those designs and, of course, no one is going to want to do that. So now we have about ten different through axle styles and many of them really suck. They are so fiddly to use that all they end up doing is pissing you off.

So, getting a through axle standard for all bikes was not going to happen. What then? Hmm...... Maybe we need to just go back to the point when Tulio invented the infernal quick release thing and do what they were doing back then. We could use wingnuts.

Nah! They would probably find ways to screw that up too.